In heart surgery, the patient's sternum is often spread using a surgical retractor. This allows the surgeon access to the patient's heart to perform the necessary procedures. An example of a prior art surgical retractor is given in Koros, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,167,223, which is incorporated herein by reference.
In beating heart surgery, the surface of the heart must be stabilized to perform surgical procedures such as bypass graphs. Often, a stabilizing fork which is attached to a surgical retractor is used to stabilize the surface of the heart. Because the heart is a pulsatile contractive muscle, the area for which the bypass is to be performed must be stabilized to allow the surgeon to suture the bypass graph to the target artery.
For some procedures, the current stabilizing fork cannot be properly placed to provide sufficient stabilization of the surgical site. Generally this is so where the target artery is located on the back side of the heart and the heart must be rotated and stabilized. Stabilization forks are not designed to rotate or hold the heart in a rotated position. For this reason, in practice, the stabilizer fork is often removed from the surgical retractor by a surgical assistant and held manually in position on the surface of the heart. A problem with this method is that it places another person within the surgical field, thereby limiting the amount of space the surgeon has available to perform the desired surgical procedures. Devices such as the Octopus from CTS, have been designed to hold the heart in a rotated position and provide stabilization of the surgical site, though they are complicated to set up and require constant attention throughout the procedure.
It is desired to have an improved method and apparatus for positioning and stabilizing the heart during heart surgery.